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Great charities can be found, but it takes legwork

Big-hearted Canadians directly donate $40 billion to charity every year, funding fights against disease, hunger, poverty and other causes in Canada and around the world.

By Kevin DonovanStaff Reporter

Sun., June 3, 2007

Big-hearted Canadians directly donate $40 billion to charity every year, funding fights against disease, hunger, poverty and other causes in Canada and around the world.

Our governments give another $90 billion — funding school boards, hospitals and other big institutions considered charities under the law.

How do individual donors know which charity to support?

On the surface, it's almost impossible to tell. Charities can claim on official statements that they are doing good works — even if they are not.

The federal government's charity regulator has only 40 people trying to keep an eye on 82,000 charities. And every day, on average, another two charities are registered. When the federal Charities Directorate finds a charity is doing something wrong they can't tell the public.

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As part of the Star's ongoing investigation we've found many great charities. Among them: Habitat for Humanity Toronto, Camp Trillium, United Way Toronto, Sleeping Children around the World, and Foodpath in Mississauga.

Why are they good?

Each one is heavy on volunteers, strong on good works you can see in action, and completely open to scrutiny. Each of the five have jumped through hoops to show they are doing a great job. The Star investigated and found that they are. We went beyond their published financial statements to look at their operations, interview staff and other people and groups who had contact with them.

Neil Hetherington, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity Toronto, runs a charity that has in the past five years built or is building 128 homes for people struggling financially. Habitat supports itself through an innovative "Restore" store that takes in building materials and resells them to the public. Their "grey power" volunteer team of retired professionals (lawyers, doctors, etc.) are often invited into a home renovation project to remove anything of value for resale in the restore. On Habitat's home building sites around the city, volunteers work with the prospective homeowner to construct a house, which the eventual owner pays for using an interest-free mortgage. Instead of giving people a charity handout, Hetherington said, "we are trying to break the cycle of poverty by giving access to capital."

What's an example of a big fundraising campaign for Habitat? Last year, they bought 10,000 brown paper leaf bags (at 69 cents apiece), put their name and slogan on it, and volunteers with wagons distributed them around the city with the idea that even if the homeowner who got the bag did not make a cash or material donation, it was still great curb-side advertising for a day or two. This fall they are handing out 20,000.

Habitat welcomes questions from donors. "We have a board policy that says any financial information is open to the public. You want to know how much a chair in our office costs? We will tell you," said Hetherington. His charity is very strict about how it presents information to the public. For example, all fundraising is fundraising (not recorded as public awareness as many charities do). Administration and fundraising is stated at 25 per cent of their expenditure annually, so 75 per cent of all expenditures are spent on good works. The Star finds that good charities spend at least 60 per cent of their budget on good works.

This charity is over the top when it comes to delivering benefits and raising money on a shoestring budget. It's the charity founded by Murray Dryden, father of hockey goalie greats Ken and Dave. The latter, a retired principal, helps run the charity since his father died. At SCAW, they raise money to buy "bed kits" for children in developing countries. The kits differ depending on the country, but generally there is a comfortable mattress, a school uniform, raincoat, school supplies and perhaps a mosquito net. The charity spends absolutely no money on fundraising, because Murray insisted it all be word of mouth. Volunteers prepare the kits, volunteers travel on their own nickel (typically $4,000) to distribute the kits, and volunteers send out confirmation of donation photos to donors – all done from the Etobicoke home where Ken and Dave learned to stop shots in the backyard.

Dave and his wife Sandra just returned from a distribution trip to the Philippines where they and other volunteers gave out 5,000 kids to smiling children and their families. SCAW gets about $1.6 million in donations a year and 100 per cent goes to the bedkit program because an endowment fund left by Murray Dryden pays the rent and small salary of SCAW's lone employee.

"For the children and their families, and our volunteers, being involved with this charity is a priceless thing," said Dryden.

Based in Peel Region is one of those great food banks that gets donated food from individuals and grocers and then uses volunteers to truck it around and hand it out from their warehouse near Dixie Rd. and Dundas St. East in Mississauga. Ten thousand people pass through the food bank each month, and Beju Lakhani, volunteer fundraising chief, said their two issues are keeping up with the demand and paying the bills for electricity, gas and rent. "We're doing okay but I would have to say we are always on the edge," said Lakhani. He's the director of sales and marketing for a software company but spends many hours each week as a Foodpath volunteer. Half the people benefiting from Foodpath are children and the charity also supports local breakfast programs. Foodpath is so volunteer-intensive that most of its annual $500,000 budget is spent on acquiring and distributing food to the needy.

This is an innovative camp for children with cancer and their families. Their two campsites in Ontario, plus daycamps around the province, see 3,100 campers annually. About 80 per cent of Trillium's $3 million expenditure is spent directly on campers, with the remainder recorded as administration and fundraising.

The theme is this: Children with cancer, and their families, need a break – if only for a week. The camps provide a typical summer camp experience but parents, siblings come along with the camper. They have 100 paid summer staff and 300 volunteers – many counsellors are cancer survivors who attended the camp.

"Kids with cancer are still children," says Trillium development director Fiona Fisher. "They arrive at camp and they can be the first one up the climbing wall, they get to sing and play." The camps are funded by various community groups but among the most notable is an annual zero-cost Toronto-based event called Set Sail for Hope that brings the camp $155,000 each year.

Toronto yacht owners, at their own expense, provide their boats and skipper the journey. Restaurants like Rodney's Oyster House, Fred's Not Here and chefs at the Westin Harbour Castle cook up a fabulous lunch on the Toronto Islands (at their own expense) and then the skippers take their guests on an afternoon cruise. Corporate sponsors pay about $7,000 each (some give additional donations). Arthur Boas, a skipper and volunteer, said they organize the whole event with eight, one-hour meetings. Cheques are written by corporate sponsors directly to Camp Trillium, a camp that Boas said runs on the ultimate shoe string budget. "These guys hammer bent nails back into shape so they don't have to buy new ones."

Old and familiar, the United Way raises money to distribute to other charities. Yes, it's a big organization with significant fundraising and administration costs. But what put it on our list was the heavy use of volunteers to raise money through workplace and other campaigns. Their public statements show that in 2005, $83.3 million was dispersed to other charities, out of total expenditures of $100 million. That 83 per cent is a good number in the charity world. The remainder of the money is spent on:administration ($2.8 million); fundraising expenditures to support volunteer campaigns ($9.9 million); and charitable works the United Way itself carries out ($3.7 million). One of the best things the Star found about United Way was the volunteer-based committees of experts who rigorously investigate charities United Way supports. That's why giving money to a United Way supported agency is a good bet.

There are, of course, other good charities around, but donors should get to know a charity before handing over any money. One place to start is The Charities Directorate, which makes all charity statements available online.

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